


In a Name

by Usami_chan13



Category: Disney Duck Universe, DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Gen, written for Father's day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 22:12:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16962432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Usami_chan13/pseuds/Usami_chan13
Summary: Sometimes, labels don’t mean anything. Sometimes, they meaneverything.





	In a Name

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a Tumblr post I read once pointing out how, despite Donald raising the triplets since they were hatched, he made the very conscious decision to teach them as they grew up that he is their uncle.

“Happy Male Caretaker Day!”

The familiar exclamation rang out through the hall, but it wasn’t addressed to Donald this time. At least, not this particular one. The boys had already greeted him earlier that morning.

Instead he watched from around the corner, out of sight, as the boys had to explain it to Scrooge: what the greeting was, what it meant, and why they used it instead of “Happy Father’s Day” like most others would use for today. Although that last one was a bit more difficult, since the boys themselves probably weren’t aware of the real reason he asked that they didn’t celebrate Father’s Day.

But really, it wasn’t complicated. To put it simply, Donald  _wasn’t_  their father.

Sure, he knew that he  _acted_  like their father; he had raised them, took care of them, worried (often too much) about their wellbeing, and loved them like any father would his children. But after everything was said and done, they still weren’t  _his_  children.

Because they would always be Della’s children.

The first few months after Della’s disappearance had been the hardest; he’d barely had any time to grieve losing his sister when, as her closest relative, the boys had been placed in his care. But while he didn’t have much time to mourn, something else took hold in the darkest corners of his heart, far removed from anything he would ever admit to anyone. Because at that time, with everything that had happened…he had started to  _resent_ Della.

At the time Della had announced she was having kids, having children of his own was the farthest thing from Donald’s mind. Then one day she was gone, and he went from barely being able to take care of himself to suddenly having to take care of infant  _triplets_. And while he had babysat for Della before, it was  _vastly_ different from having to raise the boys on his own.

(But it had to be on his own, because he refused to let them get caught up in the life that took their mother away in the first place.)

He hadn’t been  _ready_  to be a parent, and deep down, he hadn’t  _wanted_ to be. He hadn’t wanted the responsibility of raising children, of being the one to take care of them, of having their lives depend on him. He hadn’t wanted  _any_ of it…and while he had agreed to taking care of the boys because Della was his sister, he started to  _hate_ her for leaving him to deal with  _her_ kids.

And that…terrified him.

Just the idea that… _anything_ could make him so bitter towards his sister at all really scared him, especially since he knew that she would still  _be_ here if it had been up to her. If she had a say, she would be the one raising her kids, having the family they hadn’t really had growing up and being the mother she’d always wanted to be.

And the boys certainly deserved better. They should have the best mother in the world, but instead only had him as a poor replacement.

He  _tried_ , though. Perhaps because it was the guilt of being so resentful towards Della, or the realization that they really do deserve better, but after the initial fear and reluctance of having to raise three children by himself, he threw  _everything_ he had into it. He did everything he could to make sure they were healthy and (relatively) happy. He wanted to give them the best he had to offer, even if that wasn’t really much in the first place.

And in taking care of them – seeing them grow, getting to know them – he fell in love with them. Soon, they stopped being  _just_ Della’s kids and became his nephews, his  _boys_. So much so that at times, he found himself wishing that they  _were_  his kids…that he could be their father, because he was already starting to see them as his sons.

Around the time the boys started talking, there was a brief period where they had called him “Dad”, in that babbling talk that babies used when first learning to speak. He didn’t know where they had picked it up, other than maybe some of the cartoons he’d let them watch when he needed a bit of time to himself. But he wasn’t sure how or why they associated him with “Dad” (“Dada”, “Papa”, same thing), and yet they started calling him that for a time.

And for a while, he considered letting them. Having them believe he was actually their dad would have been easier than trying to explain what happened to their mother down the line. And he was like their father anyway, wasn’t he? Maybe he could pretend…

Until he remembered that the only reason he had the boys now – these three boys that he’d come to love so much – was  _because_  Della was gone in the first place. And that made him feel even  _worse_.

Because what kind of brother was he to take his sister’s children as his own? To even  _think_ …of never even mentioning her to them, when she was the reason they existed in the first place? He hadn’t even  _wanted_  them at first, or wanted kids at all. But Della had…she  _always_  had. And he only started raising them – started  _wanting_ to take care of them – because she was gone. Yet he was okay with letting the boys think he was their real parent?

No, he couldn’t do that to them…to any of them. Not to his sister, who was the one who had wanted these boys in the first place, or to the boys, who deserved to know where they really came from.

So he started correcting them, telling them he was their uncle whenever they tried to call him “dad”. It didn’t take long for them to catch on, either, learning quickly enough to call him “Uncle Donald”. And he knew it was the right thing to do, being honest with them…he just never expected it to  _hurt_ so much.

Especially when they  _did_  start asking about their mother, because he found himself unable to talk about her.

He never meant to keep Della from the boys, and had wanted to tell them about her. But he had spent so much time taking care of  _them_  that he never realized how much it would hurt to talk about her after so long…because he still had never dealt with losing her himself.

But as terrible as he felt for not being able to tell them much about her, he could never bring himself to tell them anything. Maybe one day he would be able to tell them more, but for now he could only take comfort in the fact that they knew who their mother was…that they  _had_ a mother who cared about them, and that he wasn’t their real dad.

Because those boys – the ones he cared about more than anything – deserved so much better than that.

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on Tumblr on June 17, 2018.
> 
> A story I wrote for Father's Day. Still waiting on that happy Duck fic, brain. Any day now.


End file.
